Rock Idols - Secret Lives of the Tors
Tuesday, 1 April 2025 at 10:00 - 16:00
Daily until 15th June
Are the tors of Dartmoor alive? Dartmoor artist Alex Murdin thinks that perhaps they could be – and he has tried to capture signs of life in a set of illustrations for a new guide to Dartmoor’s tors which are going on show in Rock Idols: Secret Lives of the Tors at the Princetown Visitor centre in April.
Alex says: “People think tors are cold and still, but they are very lively, it’s just we can’t see them moving because they exist on a timescale so different to ours. They are certainly alive in our imaginations and have been the basis of so many of Dartmoor’s myths and legends - the Devil at Dewerstone, Old Crockern at Crockern Tor and Vixiana at Vixen Tor to name a few.”
The show contains all the artwork fromthe new book, also called Rock Idols, which is a co-production between Alex and his writer wife Sophie Pierce, who have lived locally for 25 years. From the extraordinary Victorian staircase up Blackingstone Rock to the monumental granite columns of Fur Tor, the Queen of the Moor, the tors are depicted in all their wonder and variety. The book is their personal response to Dartmoor’s extraordinary landscape, as well as a helpful guide to the reader, delving into the moor’s geology, archaeology, folklore, nature and social history.
The term ‘rock idols’ was used by Victorian writers to describe the tors, which they believed were worshipped by the Druids. This is not such a strange notion. Many cultures around the world, including the Aborigine and Sami people, revere rocks, for their natural grandeur and their possible connection to other worlds. On Dartmoor it is thought many of megalithic monuments like stone circles and stone rows align on the tors, or other landscape features.
By reviving the term Rock Idols, Alex and Sophie want to re-ignite people’s love and fascination with these extraordinary natural monoliths which are so unique to Dartmoor, and pay homage to the wonderful illustrated guidebooks of the past by authors such as Samuel Rowe and William Crossing. The new drawings form part of a body of work that Alex is doing about the rock forms of Dartmoor. He has another, ongoing project A Thousand Stones, drawing all the stones of the Erme Valley Stone Row, the longest Bronze Age row in the world, and is also currently collaborating on a project with archaeologist Alan Endacott, drawing new prehistoric finds in north east Dartmoor.
Alex and Sophie will be doing a talk about their fascinating project at the Princetown Visitor Centre on Sunday April 5th at 11:30am.
Location: Princetown Visitor Centre
Booking required: no
Charge: